WesternNewBridgeLibraryAnnounc-优题课

Celebrity (名人) has become one of the most important representatives of popular culture. Fans used to be crazy about a specific film, but now the public tends to base its consumption on the interest of celebrity attached to any given product. Besides, fashion magazines have almost abandoned the practice of putting models on the cover because they don’t sell nearly as well as famous faces. As a result, celebrities have realized their unbelievably powerful market potential, moving from advertising for others’ products to developing their own.
Celebrity clothing lines aren’t a completely new phenomenon, but in the past they were typically aimed at the ordinary consumers, and limited to a few TV actresses. Today they’re started by first-class stars whose products enjoy equal fame with some world top brands. The most successful start-ups have been those by celebrities with specific personal style. As celebrities become more and more experienced at the market, they expand their production scale rapidly, covering almost all the products of daily life.
However, for every success story, there’s a related warning tale of a celebrity who overvalued his consumer appeal. No matter how famous the product’s origins is, if it fails to impress consumers with its own qualities it begins to resemble an exercise in self-promotional marketing. And once the initial (最初的）attention dies down, consumer interest might fade, loyalty returning to tried-and-true labels.
Today, celebrities face ever more severe embarrassment. The pop-cultural circle might be bigger than ever, but its rate of turnover has speeded up as well. Each misstep threatens to reduce a celebrity’s shelf life, and the same newspaper or magazine that once brought him fame has no problem picking him to pieces when the opportunity appears. Still, the ego’s (自我的）potential for expansion is limitless. Having already achieved great wealth and public recognition, many celebrities see fashion as the next frontier to be conquered. As the saying goes, success and failure always go hand in hand. Their success as designers might last only a short time, but fashion — like celebrity — has always been temporary.
Fashion magazines today ________.

A．seldom put models on the cover

B．no longer put models on the cover

C．need not worry about celebrities’ market potential

D．judge the market potential of every celebrity correctly

A change in the consumer market can be found today that _______.

A．price rather than brand name is more concerned

B．producers prefer models to celebrities for achievements

C．producers prefer TV actresses to film stars for advertisements

D．quality rather than the outside of products is more concerned

The underlined sentence in Paragraph 4 indicates that any wrong step will possibly ______.

A．decrease the popularity of a celebrity and the sales of his products

B．damage the image of a celebrity in the eyes of the general public

C．cut short the artistic careen of a celebrity in show business

D．influence the price of a celebrity’s products

The passage is mainly about _______.

A．celebrity and personal style

B．celebrity and market potential

C．celebrity and fashion design

D．celebrity and clothing industry

Googlefight is a simple service available on the Internet which offers you the chance to compare two different items and see how many hits they get on the Google search engine. The seemingly simple device has proved invaluable to users, especially to help win arguments.
For example, imagine that you and your friends are arguing about who are the most popular music or movie stars, you can decide the argument by writing the names in the Googlefight boxes. Let’s say that you are arguing about Jackie Chan and Jet Li. You will quickly discover that Jet Li is mentioned 16 million times on Google pages, whereas Jackie Chan is mentioned a mere 12 million times! In this unscientific way, you can claim victory for one Star over another.
But teachers have come up with ways of using Googlefight which are much more useful from an academic point of view, particularly when it comes to studying languages. You can, for example, find out the frequency of two words with the same meaning, and deduce (推断) from the answers which one is more common. For example, let’s take the words “buy” and “purchase”, which mean the same thing (although “buy” is only a verb and “purchase” is both a verb and a noun). It is immediately clear from Googlefight that “buy” is much more commonly used, with a massive three and a half billion hits, compared to only one billion occurrences for the more formal word.
But the real value of Googlefight to the language learner is in determining which is the more common of two phrases. For example, “raining cats and dogs” is an old-fashioned English expression about the weather. Do English speakers still use it? Or are they more likely to say “pouring down”? Googlefight suggests the latter. “Pouring down” has 898,000 Google hits, whereas “raining cats and dogs” only has 326,000.
With phrases, it’s important to remember that you need to use quote marks to make the search more accurate. For example, if you type in the similar phrases “look after” and “take care of “ without quote marks, the second phrase seems to be more common, but with quote marks, the result is reversed.
What is Googlefight?

A．A fight between two people on Google.

B．A way to make sure you win an argument.

C．A website showing how many hits two different things have.

D．A list of all the websites on Google.

Language teachers find it useful because _______.

A．there are a lot of words on Googlefight

B．it can tell them which of the two words with the same meaning appears more often

C．some words mean the same thing

D．common words have a billion hits

What must you remember to do if you are checking phrases by Googlefight?

A．Make sure they mean be same thing.

B．Make sure they are different.

C．Remember to put quote marks round the phrase.

D．Don’t put quote marks round the phrase.

Which statement is NOT true according to the passage?

A．Googlefight is effective to determine the more common of two phrases.

B．Googlefight is a scientific way to decide an argument.

C．Quote marks can make the search more accurate.

D．Googlefight is invaluable to help win arguments.

Simply by analyzing a drop of blood, a doctor will be able to diagnose a birth defect or even cancer when it is in the early stage; using new technology, a material lighter but much stronger than steel can be produced.
These may sound like dreams at present. But the dreams may soon come true as research findings in laboratories are being turned into products more rapidly in the new century, according to experts participating in the fourth Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Technomart, a technology exhibition and trade fair in Suzhou.　　
"Most people think nano-technology（纳米技术）is too far-fetched to be real. But in fact nano-technology has been applied in a wide range of fields, such as medicine. It is coming into our daily life," said Cheng Jiachong from a Hong Kong-based nano-technology firm.
Nano-technology based on the nanometer, the unit of which is a billionth of a meter, enables scientists to have new concepts of disease diagnosis and treatment on a molecular（分子）and atomic scale, Cheng said.　　
By using nanometer particles, a doctor can separate the fetus cells（胚胎细胞）from the blood of a pregnant woman to see if the development of the fetus is normal. This method is also being used in the early diagnosis of cancer and heart disease, he said.　　
One of the most significant impacts of nano-technology is at the bio-inorganic materials interface, according to Greg Tegart, executive advisor of the APEC Center for Technology Foresight.　　
"By combining enzymes（酶）and silicon chips we can produce biosensors. These could be implanted in humans or animals to monitor health and to deliver corrective doses（剂量）of drugs," he told the participants a technology forum during the exhibition.　　
"Nano-technology could affect the production of nearly every man-made object, from automobiles, tires and computer circuits（电路）, to advanced medicines and tissue replacement, and lead to the invention of objects yet to be imagined," said David Minns, a special advisor to the National Research Council of Canada.　　
It has been shown that carbon nano-tubes are ten times as strong as steel, with one sixth of the weight, and nano-scale systems have the potential to make supersonic transport cost- effective and to increase computer efficiency by millions of times, he said.
The experts agreed that the APEC technology exhibition and trade fair provided many chances for exchanges of innovative ideas and products.
Realization of the dreams mentioned in the first paragraph will mainly base on ________.

A．APEC	B．Chinese scientist
C．the APEC Center for Technology Foresight	D．Nano-technology

The length of a nanometer equals to ______.

A．

meter

B．

meter

C．

meter

D．

meter

We can imply from what David Minns said that _________.

A．Nano-technology could only be used to invent new objects.

B．Nano-technology could be widely used to produce or invent objects.

C．Nano-technology is a money-consuming technology.

D．Nano-technology can not be used to improve the service of Internet.

Compared to steel, carbon nano-tubes are ________.

A．stronger and lighter	B．lighter but as strong
C．stronger but as light	D．poor in quality

When Jeanne Calment entered the world in 1875, telephones and automobiles still lay in the future. Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso were not yet born. The Eiffel Tower was 14 years from being built. As a teenager, she met Vincent Van Gogh, near her home in Arles, in the south of France. He was “very ugly, ungracious (举止粗俗的), impolite, sick—I forgive him, they called him loco (精神失常的)”, she recalled. When she died last week at age 122, she was the world’s eldest person. (There are others who claimed to the title, but only Calment had the official documents to prove her age.)
Each February 21, her birthday, she would share the secrets of long life. Some years it was “a sense of humour”, others it was “keeping busy”. “God must have forgotten me,” she once explained. The truth probably was that she had good genes: her mother reportedly lived to be 86 and her father 94.
Her life had its sadness: she outlived her husband, her only daughter and her grandson. According to a friend, she was imperturbable. “If you can’t do anything about it,” she reportedly said, “don’t worry about it.”
In her last years she was nearly blind and deaf, but her health remained good. She ate a few bars of chocolate each week and continued smoking until a few years ago, when she could no longer light her own cigarettes. She never lost her sense of humour. On her 110^th birthday, she commented, “I’ve only ever had one wrinkle, and I’m sitting on it. “Her longevity made her famous; her spirit made her eternal (永恒的).
Why does the author mention Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso and the Eiffel Tower?

A．To show that Calment had seen famous people and things.

B．To emphasize that Calment was born a long time ago.

C．To indicate that Calment is just as famous.

D．To admire the knowledge that Calment had.

The author believed that Calment’s longevity is mainly due to ______.

A．a sense of humor	B．being kept busy
C．belief in God	D．good genes

The underlined word “imperturbable” means ________.

A．calm

B．humorous

C．friendly

D．healthy

Toward the end of the story, the author seems to be impressed by Callment ’s _________.

A．spirit

B．religious belief

C．knowledge

D．longevity

it tastes just chicken
Away from home, eating is more than just a way to keep your stomach full．It is a language all its own, and no words can say, "Glad to meet you ．．．glad to be doing business with you ．．．" quite like sharing a meal offered by your host．
Clearly, mealtime is not the time for you to say, "Thanks, but no thanks．" Acceptance of the food on your plate means acceptance of host, country, and company．So, no matter how difficult it may be to swallow, swallow．Or, as one experienced traveler says, "Travel with a cast-iron stomach and eat everything everywhere．"
Often, the food offered represents proudly your host country's eating culture．What would Ataiericans think of a French person who refused to take a bite of homemade apple pie or sirloin? Our discomfort comes not so much from the thing itself; it comes from our umamiliarity with it．After all, an oyster has remarkably the same look as a sheep's eye; and a first look at a lobster would remind almost anybody of a creature from a science fiction movie, not something you dip in butter and eat．By the way, in Saudi Arabia sheep's eyes are a famous dish and in parts of China it's bear's paw soup．
Can you refuse such food without being rude? Most experienced business travelers say no, at least not before taking at least a few bites．It helps, though, to slice any item very thin．This way, you minimize the taste and the reminder of where it came from．Or, " Swallow it quickly, " as one traveler recommends．"I still can't tell you what sheep's eyeballs taste like．" As for dealing with taste, the old line that "it tastes just like chicken" is often thankfully true．Even when the "it" is really rat or snake．
Another useful piece of advice is not knowing what you are eating．What's for dinner? Don't ask． Avoid glancing into the kitchen or looking at English-language menus．Your host will be pleased that you are eating the food he offers, and who knows? Maybe it really is chicken in that soup．
The purpose of the article is to ____．

A．introduce unfamiliar food

B．share the writer's personal experiences

C．suggest ways to overcome a cultural barrier

D．advise on how to politely refuse to eat foreign food

According to the writer, people hesitate at strange food mainly due to ____．

A．the way it looks	B．safety worries
C．lack of information about it	D．the unfamiliar atmosphere

From the article we can infer that ____．

A．an American may feel comfortable with sirloin

B．one should refuse strange food after a few bites

C．English-language menus are not always dependable

D．one needs a cast-iron stomach to travel in other cultures

One may say "It tastes just like chicken．" when ____．

A．showing respect for chicken-loving nations

B．greeting people with different dieting habits

C．evaluating chefs at an international food festival

D．getting someone to try a visually unpleasant meal

A．buy a ticket	B．apply in advance
C．make a reservation	D．contact the call-down service

A．only during the daytime	B．in case of emergency
C．till the end of the Spring Break	D．after 22∶00 p．m．every day